Stirling Castle. 603 



soil a sandy loam, moist rather than dry, so that the artificial 

 disposition of it must have been effected at a trifling expense. 

 The extent of the whole has probably been 3 or 4 acres. A 

 plan and section of the most interesting part of this garden have 

 been kindly taken for us by Messrs. Drummond (fig. 75.), who 

 also furnished the following extracts : — 



Notices of the King's Knot at Stirling Castle. — In the gardens 

 is a mound of earth in form of a table, called the Knot, with 

 benches of earth around, where, according to tradition, the 

 court sometimes had fetes champetres. Vestiges of the walks and 

 parterres, with a few stumps of trees, are still visible. 



" Barbour, in his account of the battle of Bannockburn, makes 

 mention of a round table, which was then at the foot of the 

 castle. He says that, when Edward of England was told by 

 Mowbray, the governor, that he could not expect safety by being 

 admitted into the castle, ' he took the way beneath the castle by 

 the round table.' It is of great antiquity, and was possibly in 

 that place long before the gardens were formed. Here probably 

 they exercised the pastime called The Knights of the Round 

 Table, of which several of the Scottish monarchs, particularly 

 James IV., are said to have been fond. Mr. Gough remarks 

 that a similar table had, not long before he wrote, existed at 

 Windsor. (Edition qfCambden, 1789.) Among the gardens are 

 vestiges of a canal, on which the royal family and court aired in 

 barges." (Nimmo's History of Stirlingshire.) 



" The King's Gardens. — Their present condition is that of a 

 marshy piece of pasture ground completely desolated, so far as 

 shrubs and flowers are concerned. The utmost exertion of the 

 memory of the present generation can only recollect an old 

 cherry tree which stood at the corner of one of the parterres, 

 and which was burnt down by the wadding of a shot which 

 some thoughtless sportsman fired into its decayed trunk, as he 

 happened to pass it on his way home from the fields. An octa- 

 gonal mount in the centre of the supposed garden is called ' The 

 King's Knote,' and is said by tradition to have been the scene of 

 some forgotten play or recreation, which the king used to enjoy 

 on that spot with his court. In an earlier age this strange object 

 seems to have been called ' The Round Table,' and, in all pro- 

 bability, it was the scene of the out-of-doors game of that name, 

 founded upon the history of King Arthur, and of which the 

 courtly personages of former times are known to have been fond. 

 Barboui*, in his heroic poem of The Bruce which he wrote at 

 the conclusion of the fourteenth century, thus alludes to it: — 



' And besouth the Castill went they thone, 

 Rycht by the Round Table away ; 

 And syne the Park enwiround thai, 

 And towart Lythkow held in by.' 



